


never a woman

by sazzafraz



Series: a story worth watching will always lose all control [1]
Category: The Black Tapes Podcast
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, F/F, F/M, Unreliable Narrator
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2017-08-31
Updated: 2017-08-31
Packaged: 2018-12-22 02:06:57
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 11,749
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/11957457
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sazzafraz/pseuds/sazzafraz
Summary: Other ethical dilemmas Alex Reagan might have.





	never a woman

**Author's Note:**

> I AM GOING INTO THIS SAYING I HAVE CHOSEN NOT TO USE WARNINGS. This is usually not something I do and if you feel really strongly that it needs a specific one, please tell me and I'll add it.
> 
> It's been a long as hell time since I've written something that was a genuine self contained one shot centred around a single character. I think the last time I was still in Teen Wolf so that's like...several years. Anyway I really felt a need to sort of shake out of where I've been lately and into something more comfortable. Things this fic does not have: a beta, a great understanding of timelines or a particular care for realism. That unreliable tag is up for a reason.
> 
> This also the most porn I've written for a long ass time.
> 
> Title from White Sea's - Never A Woman. Possibly the ONLY song on that album that has nothing to do with this fic.

“It’s brilliant.”

That’s Nic. 

“Thanks,” Alex replies. It’s actually just a rehash of a story she did back in college. Updated and polished for a new decade and a new audience but still the same shape. It’s been a few weeks since she’s slept well -since the stuff with the upside down face. She’s not exactly worrying about it, though. Stitched on faces are freaky even when things are where they should be. 

“So.” Nic draws the O out like he does when the recorder is on. She stifles a laugh. Some people find it annoying. And it is annoying. If a sentence can take five seconds Nic will take twenty, but Alex has the benefit of knowing he only started doing it when their old boss accused him of being too chatty.  _ If you can say it in three words Mr Silver,  _ Mr Richardson used to say,  _ say it in two.  _ Somehow Nic heard  _ make everything last as long as possible because you don’t care about your job.  _ If he was less talented, less obsessive or less competent at research Nic would’ve been fired in their first month. Alex on the other hand hung on to Richardson like a pit bull. He expected absolutely nothing from her. When Alex showed up after a three week investigation with a great story, several death threats and a since lapsed restraining order, he had to admit that her vagina and short hair didn’t make her functionally useless in a man's world.

They’re both lucky to have PNWS. Nic because Terry and Paul find his curiosity adorable. Alex because they approve of her tenacity.

“Al-ex.” Nic tries again. Alex snaps to focus. Daydreaming is also new. It used to be action movies and pulitzers. Lately it’s even between pulitzers, shadow demons and how much of an inconvenience a foot or so of height difference really is. Nic clears his throat, again. “I have a cool idea for you.”

“Oh?” Alex really does focus on him now. “What for?”

“Black Tapes.” Nic forestalls her reply. “I know. You’re all good. You want us to leave you and the good doctor alone. Possibly in a nice cabin. In a snowstorm.” Nic grins at her dismay. This is why you don’t work with your friends. He leans back in the one good roller chair in the office. The only one the interns have yet to destroy. “A haunted one, of course. But I got a pretty interesting message from this guy way out in a small town near one of Strand’s other famous cases. He heard about it through the grapevine. A demonic wife. Pretty cool stuff for a holdover episode. Back to the basics.”

Nic shows her the details. It does seem like the cookie cutter version of paranormal investigations. Missing wife who seemed to change rapidly over a short period of time. Possibly mental illness, but her husband insists something  _ supernatural  _ was going on with her. Their only daughter was the last person to see her before she disappeared. Just walked out into the snow one day leaving nothing but bloody footprints behind.

The wife (identified as  _ wife  _ and  _ wife  _ only. Nic must want her to take lead on the research) is a pretty woman about Alex’s age. The provided picture has her smiling at the camera wearing a peasant blouse and matching long skirt. She seems unbothered by the cold. 

Alex’s mouth goes dry.

“I’ll do it.” Alex says. She’s already figuring out if she can drive there. “Send me the details?”

“Already have.” Nic smiles. 

“Uh huh,” Alex spares a smile for him. “MK rubbing off on you?”

Nic pushes her roller chair towards the door. “That is none of your business. Off to the research cavern with you.”         

It doesn’t take long to dig up the information she needs. She’s just got off the phone with Nikolai Magnusson when she climbs into her car.  She calls Strand. She doesn’t expect him to come along but courtesy demands she leaves a message for him. Overheard the rain changes direction running away from the way she’s driving.

\--

Heather Collins lived down the road. She’s red blonde with bright blue eyes. On the show Alex would describe her as about average height, lithe and the sort of woman you expect to win bake sales. Alex knows for a fact that her mother, an earlier and abruptly discontinued model, won the local pie competition for three years before her untimely death. 

Heather Collins was just a girl with a soft constellation of freckles over her nose and pimples under her chin when Alex Reagan first found her sitting under the tree. Alex was late to meet Nic and his suspicious friends to smoke a bowl or two before watching some shitty sci fi movie. Heather had a book tucked under her nose, not enough clothes on, picking at the ground with the hand not holding the book. Red hair was pulled back from her face like she’d just gotten out of bed. The places where her skin was bared were like beacons to Alex. Bruises like hands, welts like burns, skin that’s near bloody with how red it is and a swollen lip. She looks like someone’s taken her by the ankles, hung her upside down and shaken her for a good half hour. She looks like someone’s been eating her alive. 

Alex halts. Common manners and the lecture about  _ women supporting other women  _ make her ask, “Are you alright?”

The girl blinks up at her from where she’s curled around her book. “Yea. I’m Heather.”

“Alex.” She should really get going, that weed isn’t going to smoke itself, but- “is it good? The book?”

“Yeah.” Heather Collins blushes like it’s the first time anyone’s ever asked her a question. “It’s- Would you like to see? It’s a new fantasy, or, like maybe that’s not your thing?-”

“You’d like my friend Nic.” Alex muses. She dumps her bag next to Heather and sits down. Heather’s big blue eyes crease like they know something she doesn’t. In the future Alex will learn to associate this look with accidents she can’t always afford to make. Right now it’s a lighthouse to the churning undeveloped need to  _ know  _ that drives her. “He started that D&D club.”

“Wait, isn’t he the one that has a name like a demon- Nico something-”

“Nicodemus.” Alex confirms. “Hence Nic. Yes, his parents are the sort of people you imagine when you hear that.”

“Wicked.” Heather smiles. It’s pretty. “Wanna hear the story?”

Alex unwinds the scarf around her neck and, after a thoughtful moment, wraps it around Heather’s neck. She must be cold. “Always.” 

\--  

Nikolai Magnusson is a career public servant. He was a police officer until an injury forced him to retire. Shortly afterwards he became a firefighter, met and married a woman near a decade younger than himself, Heather Sommers, then a waitress at a local diner. They had one daughter: Olivia Magnusson, fourteen, a talented artist. The trouble started a few years earlier when Olivia was ten and Heather realised she was losing her grip on her daughter. She became obsessed with the woods outside their home. She’d spend hours outside holding her daughter's hand. Teaching her how to read moss on trees. How to tell stories to the wind. Olivia loved her mother, loved the woods and didn’t tell her father about the men in the trees. There were men in the sky, men in the windows, men in the shadows and they wanted her baby. Heather couldn’t save her, she knew, but she could teach her to hide. 

Late last winter, the longest night of the year, Heather hid Olivia in the woods. She made her a house out of snow and gave her a bowl of pasta. Then she tried to shoot herself. Her husband was late home from work and found his daughter wrapped in her mother's coat, bare footprints following back to the point at which her bloody footprints just disappeared. She was never seen or heard from again, but judging by the blood she must have died. Every night since then Olivia has heard her mother calling for her. Her husband sees her in the mirrors.    

Any other day Alex would be all over this.

Unfortunately Nikolai Magnusson is a nice guy with a pot belly, he’s weathered more than handsome and if she met him in a bar she’d tell every one of her friends and any stranger she met not to go home with him. Alex has good instincts both as a woman and a journalist: Nikolai Magnusson is an a grade predator. If his wife turned up murdered he would be the first person she’d pick. 

Case in point: Strand totally throws him. Nikolai Magnusson only has her eyes for her as she folds out of their rental car. He’s almost all over her covering up what she feels is an attempt to psych her out with false charm when he realises someone else is there. If she was on her own she’s sure he would’ve touched her. Helped her out of her car. Taken her coat. The second another man registers he steps back. The look he gives Strand would’ve been cordial, almost friendly to someone else, some sort of masculine assessment.  _ Is this woman yours? Nice going buddy. _ Unfortunately Strand is himself, he came dressed as himself, and neither acknowledges nor returns the greeting. Instead he sweeps his cold eyes around and stops just short of pursing his lips. Strand doesn’t help when he comes around the side shrugging in his goddamn Burberry coat to take her small carry bag. He’s done it a dozen times, is virtually incapable of allowing her to carry her own things when in company. Alex grew up with her lumberjack father. Magnusson is going to think he’s a bit of an asshole. 

Alex bites back her immediate urge to resolve things. Strand  _ is  _ an asshole. He can handle whatever it is Magnusson does next. Magnusson shrugs the odd meeting off and leads them into the house. Alex leads the way but almost startles at the brief touch Strand places on her lower back when she nearly slips on a patch of ice. He gives her, her carry bag at the door, hangs her coat with his and sits down in the Magnussons open plan living room. Alex sets herself up, carries boring chit chat she’d usually enjoy about the local weather, even forces Strand to unbend from whatever snit he’s in. Magnusson passes her a cup of tea taking care to come too close. Alex blocks him as carefully as she can. She offers him less than the usual politeness under the guise of professionalism.

“Are we ready?” Strand taps his foot impatiently, spurred to action. 

“Olivia! Come down!” Magnusson turns the full weight of his attention on Strand. “Mr-”

“Doctor.” Strand grunts.

Magnusson shrugs. “Sure pal. Look I was expecting Alex,  _ Miss Reagan- _ ” he corrects when Strand looks as if he might call him out on the intimacy, “and I was surprised to get her. I’m sure you have better things to do then be here.”

Alex marvels at his ability to degrade the person he asked for help, imply that this is beneath Strand and that Strand is beneath him in one sentence. It’s almost as cutting as Strand at his best. She should butt in but she wants to see where this goes.

Strand sighs, crosses his arms and leans back. The thin cashmere sweater pulls across his shoulders making it clear that although he lacks the bulk of a firefighter he isn’t some doddering old academic. “Mr Magnusson if all you required was Miss Reagan's opinion the show has an inbox. If you require someone to ascertain whether or not you’re being _haunted_ it is my inbox you should have sent your message to. Assuming you did the first in good faith then it’s fortunate I’m here since Miss Reagan would have called me anyway, being intelligent enough to realise she isn’t the expert here. If your intentions are less than pure please do us all the kindness of saying so _now_ so we can stop wasting time.”

Magnusson glowers. “What do you mean by that?”

“You’re looking for fifteen minutes of minor fame.” Strand smiles, all teeth. “In which case you’ve come to the wrong place. There are no easy marks here.”

Alex actually can’t keep up with the insults. She’s taking a lot of them, though. She’s just about to say so when Heather Collins steps out with a younger face and says, “I’m Liv, nice to meet you.”

That’s when the cabinet falls over sending the television crashing to the floor. 

\--

Heather waits under the tree for a week straight before Alex catches on. As an apology she brings them both hot chocolate. Alex’s parents are away for a few day rehoming her grandfather after his latest fall. Being responsible, at least in comparison to Nic who can’t be trusted to take care of himself let alone a house and siblings, her parents gave her the run of things. She invites Heather in for a second cup.

Heather pads around the house, trailing fingertips along the walls, pressing hard into the carpet. Alex’s sense of story is awake even now. Heather moves like someone who has no idea what a home looks like. 

“So who gave you those bruises?” Alex asks. She has her feet up on her bed staring down at where Heather is stretched out on the floor. Heather took off her pants but left her stretchy sweatshirt on. She has blue and yellow marks on her ankles, a pair of thumbs on her neck. Heather startles. “I don’t know what you mean.”

Alex frowns. Her mother gave her this lecture once. One part  _ no sex, no drugs.  _ Two parts  _ we love you and no means no.  _ And a splash of  _ but these things happen and if you see them you have to help. You have to say something.  _

“Do you need help?”

Heather rolls over, tucks her knees to her chest. “I need you to keep being my friend.”

That doesn’t roll with what Alex’s parents have told her but Heather doesn’t really have those. She’s an only child and her whole family lives with her. She’s with Alex, her family or at school. She doesn’t have other friends. If this is happening at home than parents are out of the question. She could tell her own but all they’d try and do is keep Alex safe. That doesn’t keep  _ Heather  _ safe. 

“Please? I know you, that this is weird but it’s worse when people  _ know- _ ” Heather’s face is pale with stress. “I just-”

“Yeah.” Alex decides. If a friend is what Heather needs, she’ll be a friend.   

\--

“It’s clearly faulty building materials.” Strand says with complete certainty. Alex rocks back on her heels, recorder up and hums agreeably. 

Magnusson is standing near the stairs with Olivia. The girl has a dancer’s frame. She stands uneasily, looking right down at her socked feet. Her father is careful to keep her above the menace of broken glass and splintered wood. In the smooth reflection of the large windows across from Olivia, Alex sees another pair of familiar blue eyes-

“You’re not arguing,” Strand says.

“Hm?” Alex cuts away, looks over the glass on the floor. The light pulls off it in strange green strokes. “I thought you’d be happy about that?”

“It does ruin the flow of your show.” He says with good humor. His eyebrows pull together. “Are you alright?”

The wood splintered on impact. Much too hard for something falling over. Alex feels like she should say something but an old longing presses down on her tongue. If there's a poltergeist here, a demon, it’s one Alex knows the name of and can never speak aloud. Maybe she’s projecting. The good doctor’s  _ apophenia  _ strikes again. A cold night and a rapidly retracting metal frame, poorly made screws, a low level earthquake. A coincidence just as likely as the next and nothing supernatural in sight. Nothing special here but the unique randomness of an ordinary life.  

Nothing but the ordinary. 

“I’m fine.” Alex rolls her shoulders back and makes is true.  “Should we get dinner? I can’t imagine they want us here for the clean up.”

Strand raises an eyebrow. “Dinner sounds good.”

“Mr Magnusson?” The two by the stairs look up. “We’ll leave you for the evening, if that’s alright with you?”

“Of course, Alex.” Magnusson frowns at the ground carrying that same twist of the lips to her, no, to the windows behind her. Huh. “I’ll call you?”

“Please do.”

It’s not that easy to get out of the house. Magnusson drags his feet. Olivia disappears outside. Strand wants a better look. When Alex manages to extricate herself it’s a late dinner and she’s glad for her warm scarf. There’s an unseasonable cold in the air. As they fold into the car with Strand at the wheel Alex raises her phone and lowers the window to take a snap for the website. 

Liv Magnusson stands with her back to them, one hand curled protectively around herself, the other clenching on the air. Alex can see her shift from foot to foot but with the wind roaring towards them she can’t hear a word she’s saying.  

\--

Alex shows up at the emergency room two towns over just after midday. She skipped school on account of biblical level cramps and caught the bus straight over. Heather is checked in under a different name but the hospital is so overworked that the nurse just waves her on. Heather called her from the hospital phone just past four am and asked her to bring her some books, some underwear and a packet of cigarettes. 

Heather heaves herself out of bed. They go out onto the roof. Sit cross legged as Heather smokes and Alex finishes off her hospital lunch. It’s a nice sunny day, clear sky and a low summer wind. Heathers bruises shine on her pale skin but the peace of the day washes some of the pain from her eyes. 

“So,” Heather says on the end of an exhale. “If I kissed you would you hit me?”

Alex’s mouth drops open. She shakes her head.

“Cool.” Heather leans over and places a soft kiss to her lips. “So do you want to-”

Alex throws both arms around her friend's neck and shows her what a real first kiss is like.

\--

Olivia Magnusson is possibly the sweetest girl Alex has ever met. 

Her father leaves them alone on the condition that they leave the door open. Fair enough. Strand is stuffed into the room with them. He’s careful to make sure that Olivia has an escape route. She’s never seen Strand be  _ especially  _ kind to a child but she has noticed that he tries not to trap them. He’s shit at patience, tolerance and politeness most times but he makes an effort to not be  _ unkind.  _

Olivia smiles shyly at Strand. She’s not up to batting her eyelashes, or smiling invitingly but Alex can tell she really, really wants to. It’s so adorable Alex might cry.

As it turns out Olivia is sincerely interested in obscure history. She and Strand have quite an overlap in their personal library. He advises her on the best translations and the best place to start learning latin ‘on one’s own’. She can see why he’d be a good teacher, even as she’s sure his voice and crooked smile are of vying interest for Olivia’s attention. The girl is sweet, smart and happy to talk. She’s a little lonely without her mother. For separate reasons, ones Alex fully intends to leave alone on the podcast, Strand is beyond patient with her. Alex is too.

When they get to the matter at hand Olivia is relaxed. Even if Alex was firing on all cylinders from a position of ethical certainty she’d find doing this hard. Olivia is so young.  

“My mom’s not crazy.” Olivia states for the recorder. She has yet to talk about her mother in the past tense. “She- She said some weird things but it’s not like dad’s friends say. She’s not crazy or a satan worshipper. She just figured out that God wasn’t going to help her so she might as well try something else.”

“What do you mean God wasn’t going to help?” Strand asks.

Blood rushes through Alex’s ears. “You mean, like, she was an atheist?”

“No.” Olivia shakes her head. She manages to look Strand in the eyes. “She says that if he didn’t listen the first thousand times she cried why would he listen the next thousand. She believes in the rule of nature, that the world is bigger than us, and maybe something  _ else  _ would hear her.”

Okay. So, demons are still on the table. “But to be clear-”

“No Miss Reagan.” Olivia says with more spine than anything before. “She doesn’t believe in ghosts or demons or god. She just believes that there had to be something more. She didn’t- We didn’t do anything weird, I promise. We just hung out in the woods.” Olivia deflates completely. 

“There are a number of interesting historical sites near here.” Strand says. He shoots her a look.  _ This is your job,  _ it says,  _ why aren’t you comforting her?  _ For her part Alex is trying to keep her head on her shoulders. He’s right. The only person who gets hurt here is Olivia. 

“Yeah?” She address Strand but touches Olivia. The girl leans in. Alex is the same age and height as her mother. “Did the two of you go to any?”

Olivia stays where she is, next to Alex, but happily records at least twenty minutes of back and forth with Strand about the local attractions.      

\--

The one and only time Alex called the cops Heather didn’t speak to her for a week.

“I’m sorry but. You were so hurt.” Alex tries to get her to understand. “They’re going to  _ kill you- _ ”

Heather sneers. Her eye is still mostly swollen shut. Her lip is twisted and puffy. “Then help me escape! Christ, no one is interested in what happens to me! Not the police! Not god, or angels or fucking satan! Be my girlfriend! I need you to help me feel-” Her right arm is still stiff and unhappy but she throws both of them up anyway. “Ask me what I need Alex. Don’t fucking assume.”

Alex cries at that. She cradles Heather in her arms. Carefully, so carefully. “I’m sorry.”

\--

Getting around Strand would be easier if he wasn’t as observant as she is. Also if he was just shorter. 

His holding up the frame of her doorway with both arms, dwarfing her in her socked feet and thrown on jacket. She’s had a lot of drinks since she came home and started planning out the episode. She can’t just scream into the recorder or repeat domestic violence statistics. She’s got nothing. It was just going to be a walk, maybe to the liquor store, just to clear her head. Instead here’s Strand with his late night stubble, his concern, holding up her doorway. “We need to talk.”

This isn’t unstoppable force, immovable object. This is force versus force. Alex leans back and smiles, whatever else he is Strand is a  _ gentleman  _ and disarmed by manners, but all Strand does is frown. She likes -okay, small word for the feeling- she  _ likes  _ when he gives her something to work with other than collegial affection or studied disinterest. Alex has fucked those guys, the ones who think they need an air to get a girl going. Basically it just annoys her. She doesn’t need  _ seduction  _ she needs an  _ opportunity.  _ All that fussing and prancing and carefully worded innuendo just makes her sleepy. Strand is a twenty something who’s just read some manosphere bullshit on game but he’s fifty and has the actual life experience to back up his gravitas. He is a mystery. That’s why they’re here.

Well, not today. Today they’re here because Nic is excitable. 

She wants to get past him. For the first time since he returned her phone call she wants that more than she wants to challenge him. 

And for the first time since they unspokenly but mutually began averting their eyes, their hands, anything that could give away the tension between them, that  _ heat - _ he’s blocking her way. “Alex.”

“Strand.” If he’s not going to play his part she’s not going to bother either. 

“It’s three am.”

“Can’t sleep.”

Strand sighs. The big breathy one he usually saves for Paul and the interns. He’s still holding up the doorway with his arms. The thin material of his long sleeved sleep shirt is still as delightful as it was the first time he shrugged it on in front of her months ago in their first hotel room. There’s only so careful two adults over the age of twenty five in a small room will be. Alex counseled herself with her ethical obligations, the age difference and the fact that at the time her attraction was a sum of small things that had nothing to do with the person. That if she wanted to get through it she’d have to concentrate on his voice, the slightly crooked ring finger, the arch of his back and think  _ if only _ she could have some gag for when he said something  _ obnoxious.  _ Now she has the frightening thought that she might just enjoy herself, period. 

He leans to one side, arms crossed. His eyes are the same semi-distant blue she’s used to but- Well, as stated, they’ve agreed without saying the words that all of  _ this  _ is off the table. “What’s keeping you up?”  

She hesitates. 

Strand sighs. “You invited me Alex.” His voice softens but  _ somehow  _ doesn’t lose its irritation. “And unlike Simon Reese you had no prior connection to this.” 

Well. That’s true from a certain direction. Why did she invite him? This was a halloween episode. Or something to throw in over a break. There’s a million reasons for the Magnusson’s experiences. Alex can think of a hundred. But that doesn’t change the fact that there is only one. Or that she wants there to be only one. “I didn’t think you’d accept.” 

Strand hums. He spots the open whiskey bottle. Her shoulders relax when his mouth quirks up into an expression she knows, has described, can trace with eyes and heart intact. He inclines his head. Usually that means he’s about to ask the waitress for coffee or the staff for the wifi password. Usually Alex is wearing her work clothes and she can find his sensibility funny or, god forbid, endearing. He’s waiting on her yes, has already anticipated it with the slide of hip crossing the doorway. Like she said: force meets force. He’s no more inclined to accept defeat than she is.   

But she’s not saying no. She should say no. 

She steps back and lets him in.  

\--

This is not what she thought was going to happen tonight. She thought she was going to visit an old lovers grave and pour one out for her lack of journalistic integrity. After that she was coin tossing for murdering Nikolai Magnusson or getting a cheeseburger. Even fucking bets there.  

Instead she’s got Richard Strands dick in her mouth. His hand is light on the back of her head, not guiding so much as suggesting. It’s -god, there’s a reason Nic sat her down, Terry did, Amalia did, everyone who's done these embedded pieces where their whole world shrinks to a few weeks with someone, a city, a fucking football team. They said she’d get fucked up about it because you always do. But fucked up isn’t sucking down your subjects cock and wondering if he’s feeding it to you. Which one of you is steering the ship. His hand clenches in her hair. With her eyes shut she breathes in, weight in her mouth, the taste pooling under her tongue. The relentless clench of her own body begging for her to do something with the hands she has on his ass. She hadn’t managed to get his sleep pants off, only pushed them down so she could get him in her mouth. Her pinky finger is still tucked under the band. It’s a nice ass. She flexes her throat, waggles her eyebrows and pulls back slow, so slowly he stutters. This isn’t probably the longest she’s ever gotten to look at him. Long, tall, dark. There’s a joke about hands and feet and matching appendages but somehow he doesn’t seem like the type to enjoy too much silliness in sex. She smiles up at him. His eyes are gone, dark. He’s pulling at her hair with loose fingers. Not for the first time she thinks they’re having totally different conversations.

But then his hips relax, his hands gather up her hair and he takes her up on her bet.  _ She  _ dared him to double the whiskey.  _ He  _ took off his sleep shirt. Everything else is being thirty five and fifty six respectively. It’s hard to play the sexual chicken of twenty two.

Now  _ emotional  _ chicken...

She meets him in the middle. Hollowing her cheeks and trying not to bite down in her surprise when he leverages her up and pushes in. Her throat spasms. It feels raw and mean when he pulls out, just enough to let her know he’s picking up the pace. It’s like her whole body orientates to the challenge. Her cunt goes from spasming to painful, her whole body, all its vital zones, tune into him. The friction of bare air on her clit is horrendously painful. For the first time since about twenty minutes ago, when Strand frowned at her formal use of his name, when Alex said something witty but didn’t cut her eyes down fast enough, she gets hit with a bout of flight or fright. She manages to get her hand off his ass just long enough to fuck up their rhythm. He goes too deep and for about two seconds her brain short circuits  _ -holyfuckyes-  _ and then self preservation comes back. Strand pulls out, grabs her hand, puts it behind her back and slides back in in under ten seconds. Her breasts make glorious friction with his legs when he spreads his stupidly long legs and it’s enough to make her whole body twitch. Jesus fucking christ she might come from sucking someone’s dick. Strand tips her head back, frames his huge hands along her face, thumb resting against her lips.  _ Then  _ he fucks her. 

She’s a voice on the radio so she can breathe through it but- he just- this isn't what she thought it would be. He’s careful, courteous even as he uses her mouth, but he isn’t asking permission. This is a bullet point in their long interpersonal war. She’s helpless for three long seconds. Reliant on the strength of his arms and his  _ fucking  _ self control to keep her safe. She wants to kill him, a little, because it’s her job to contain this. Not his. 

Richard fucking Strand doesn’t listen to her. For some reason she wants to laugh. She’s the one who doesn’t obey stop signs not him. He’s meant to be convincing her this is a bad idea. 

Alex doesn’t give in, not quite, but she gives up making eye contact for enjoying the way his head is tipped back, his grunts, the way the slide of his cock in her mouth is audible in the room. All she can hear is him. She always thought it would be uncomfortable to be here like this, giving without getting, but it’s nice in its own way. Through her own laboured breathing she can feel his control loosening. His glasses are fogged up from his breath. His hands tighten, his hips twitch and all Alex can feel, see, do is take him relentlessly. When he comes -and he does, for a disturbingly long time- he keeps the hand in her hair tight, keeps her pressed right down on him. He spends a long while after looking at her, stroking her face only letting her move back as much as allows him to do so. “Are you alright?” 

Alex has his come dripping out of her mouth. She’s great.

In answer she pushes back, stands up, rasps, “My turn” and falls belly first on the bed. Strand laughs and moves to fall over her. Alex raises her ass and bucks him down onto the floor. If he thinks she’s not going to get hers when he got his...

Strand -Richard, okay, he’s going to eat her out if he has any sense in his brain- laughs. A big booming thing that’s kind of ugly at the end. “Let me pull up my pants first.”

Alex rolls over, limbs long and legs spread. She pulls her hands over her own body. Plays with her nipples pulling them out to hard points. She doesn’t give a shit about his pants. 

Through the valley created by her cupped breasts she catches his wry smile. The fondness he so often tries not to show her and feels an answering well in her own heart. They have to be so careful, so much. Instead of contemplating that Alex slides her own pants off and rucks up her shirt. 

Proving that she is shit at figuring him out Strand is perfectly comfortable folding to his knees in front of her, throwing a leg over his shoulder and making fun of her eagerness. He blows warm air right over her before settling down to bite and tease at her thighs. She tries to push him down but he sighs, proving what she has always suspected about his flair for the dramatic, and deigns to put his money where his mouth is. She welcomes the attention with a low moan and a finger curling pulse of pleasure. She can hear his muffled surprise at just how wet she is. That’s her, eager for it. She folds up, tenses and throws her other leg up. This is the great thing about being smaller she can lean down and make sure he stays where she wants him. And she  _ really  _ wants him.

He swears, “Christ.” But  _ gentleman  _ that he is, Strand gets right to it. It’s not the best she’s ever had -Lia in a shitty hostel in Houston retains that honor- but it’s close. He fucks her with his tongue unafraid to lick up her slick as it flows. She doesn’t even have time to be self conscious about it. Unlike a gentleman he won’t touch her clit, just mercilessly sucks at her folds. His whole face is in there, she can feel his warm breath across her slit and then his tongue firmly pushing in so hard she almost cries.  _ Then  _ he pushes her leg off and his thumb finally,  _ finally  _ finds her clit. She can’t breathe when she comes. Her hand finds a nipple, the covers of the bed, head shaking from side to side, hips pushing her off the bed. He pushes her through it until she’s begging for him to stop. 

He eases off just enough to clean her up. His stubble is a delightful scratch against the raw sides of her thighs and she has a wonderful image of trying to act professional when she can barely stand the sensitivity of her own thighs. Her hips flex, she’s getting her rythym, her sex legs -like sea legs but actually fun, when he flips her over and eats her out that way. 

She gets hers twice more. She makes up for it by tucking him into bed with her. Smoothing his hair back with her hands, working her own kisses down his chest, rubbing the tension from his arms. He sighs into her, more relaxed than she is for all her orgasms, and sleeps with his hand still in her hair. She leaves the bed first to wash up but when she comes back he’s made a space for her with his body.              

Staring at the ceiling, feeling his awful morning breath across her shoulder, she realises she should have asked why he answered her invitation. 

\--

She steals the car. Heather asks her to meet at her work. She has two and a half bags packed and ready to go, a note for her manager and five hundred in cash. Alex has created a web of lies that will cover her for a week, long enough to travel across the border and find her way to California. Everyone is away this weekend. Her parents are trusting her to look after herself while they go on vacation and Alex’s friends think she’s going with them. In truth this plan is eight months in the making. Alex has fifteen thousand dollars from her part time jobs, from a gruelling ‘internship’ with a local researcher, from watching Nic’s sisters when he wanted to go out and do something dorky instead. Alex has gritted her teeth through this. Researched everything they might need to know and some they won’t. 

Heather is five minutes late. She’s just throwing the last of the trash in the garbage behind the shitty diner, lighting up a cigarette when her boss -an ogre of a man with a pot belly that preceded him by a whole three seconds- comes barreling out. He hands her a check, her last check, and tells her to be early to her shift on Saturday. 

Heather opens the door with the hand holding the cigarette. Her eyes are haggard. She smells like fry oil. She has three orders of fries in a paper bag for the road and a thermos of coffee so strong it might be tar. 

“Ready?” Alex asks.

“Ready.” Heather opens the door and drops her cigarette on the ground, still smoking. 

Alex picks the music and it is an awful pick. Some punk rocker with a shitty home life and it takes a whole three songs before Heather spears her with a wry look. Alex apologises, it was just in there because of her dad, really. But Heather laughs, she laughs until they leave town behind them. She picks a new station, all country, and Alex threatens to kill them both in a compassionate suicide. 

Forest changes to woods changes to trees standing next to trees. If Alex closes her eyes for more than a second she still sees Heathers cigarette burning away at the starting line of a whole new life. 

\--

The police department is conflated with a half dozen other things. The fire department is just down the block. They have a Walmart and a mom and pop shop across the road. It seems like the everyday life of the whole town revolves around the station. It seems fortunate for Nikolai to lose his job here. Strans is buttoned up to his nose in scarf and coat. The weather has gotten even worse in the last few hours turning from unpleasant to downright dangerous.  Alex knows how it feels. 

The police aren’t interested in offering names so Alex goes with ‘a police officer at-’ and lets the young man ramble. He is young. Pimple faced and sinewy with youth. He talks about what a  _ stellar  _ guy Magnusson is and then turns into his skepticism about Heather. Why, she even tried to file a  _ restraining order _ against him once.

“Wait,” Alex smells blood in the water. Or blood on the snow. “You knew that there was trouble at the Magnusson house?”

“Well yeah,” the police officer shrugs. “Heather started going crazy. Saying weird shit about Nik. She has a history of mental illness so we all shrugged it off. Anyway-”

“What kind of trouble?”

Strand leans in. He’s been very, very quiet. “Alex-”

She grits her teeth. “What kind of trouble?” 

“Uh,” police officer blinks, “just that Nik wasn’t who we thought he was. Which is crazy. Anyway-”   

“Excuse me.” Alex grits out. “But I’ve just got an urgent message.”

“Oh.” the officer says.

“Yeah, sorry.” Alex stuffs her things back in her bag. “Dr Strand?”

She doesn’t actually care what he does but they drove together and fuck she’s not enough an asshole to leave him in this shitty town with its shitty weather and shitty people. Alex slams into the car and turns up the heater. The drive back to the hotel is hostile with silence. 

When she parks, she asks, “Are you going to say it’s apophenia?”

Strand rolls his eyes. “Alex, listen to me-”

Thought so. She throws herself out the door and slams it behind her. 

\--

Nikolai invites all of them over at the same time. His buddies from the police department are here to back up his version of events. They go bowling together, she overheard while she called Nic on porch, they went fishing the weekend after Heather died. It’s three large men in department issued sweats drinking coffee and shooting shit and her on the phone desperately trying to reach her friend and producing partner for a head check. The intern answers. Nic is off possibly getting high in the woods. Or getting eaten by an elder god. It’s all pretty much the same with him right now.

So she’s got only one source of back up. Strand is folded into a chair by himself, tapping away at her laptop as if he couldn’t care less about the testosterone laden show of force. He probably hasn’t noticed at all, such is the luck of being an older straight, white guy whose profession doesn’t guarantee creepy messages about how he’s going to be raped to death. 

Okay. She needs to pull back. Get this all under control before she faces a possibly grieving partner, half a police force and Strand when he doesn’t feel like dealing with her. She looks over her shoulder and sees Olivia sneak into the room. She’s so quiet. Like a ghost.

She has to get it together for Olivia. This is going to be rough on her.

She flexes her face a few times, pulls the kinks out of her smile. Pushes down her rage, her grief and prepares to face Nikolai Magnusson.   

He laughs directly into her recorder. “She was crazy at the end, you know? Thought  _ I  _ was going to hurt her. She had instability in her family. Real crazy fuckers.” 

“Of course,” Alex snaps off the end of the sentence. Nikolai, Strand and the police look at her weirdly. Olivia is staring at the floor. “We can’t assume that. You said your wife was adopted, right?” He had, in her pre-roll. Heather was an orphan who moved down just before the end of High School to live with her adopted family. She’d grilled him about the basics so they could get a smooth intro. Only for that reason. No other. She holds onto that thought for grim death.

“Uh, yeah.”

“So how do you know it was her birth family and not her adopted one that had the ‘crazy’ in it?”

“Does it matter?” He crosses his arms. “She grew up with crazy folk. Maybe it was just in the water.”

Fuck. Him. 

“Alex has a point.” Strand interjects. He manages to give the impression of sitting up straight even while almost hunched over in the shitty chair. “Saying your wife was ‘possessed by a demon’ because she was mentally ill is already a crass, ignorant position. Making that supposition based on the relative instability of her family is just ridiculous.”

“Yeah? What have you got then?”

“Perhaps you’re simply not very good with power tools.” 

Nikolai sneers. “You don’t seem the physical type.”

“Looks can be deceiving.”

“You come here and threaten me?” Nikolai bares his teeth. His friends on the local police force frown. “My wife’s missing. You got any idea what that’s like you smarmy asshole?”

Wow. That is...not something they need to cover. Even if it raises some questions. She needs to slow this down. “Mr Magnusson-”

“Nikolai.” 

“Nikolai,” she breathes in, slows this all down, “you called us. We came to help you. You’re right things are getting heated. Why don’t we break for lunch, relax and reconvene where you said she disappeared?” 

“Sure Alex.” Her given name is easy on her lips. Alex is a fucking shark at this. He can’t rattle her that way. “There’s a great pub. Here I’ll give you the address.”

That is way too close to a pass for her liking. “I’m sure Dr Strand and I will enjoy it.” 

Nikolai smiles. The charming one. “I’m sorry. This stuff brings out the beast in me.” He touches her hand and Alex wishes spontaneous combustion was real just so she didn’t have to live with that touch.

Sheer pleasantness drags her through the rest of the exit. She records a few bits for a bridge, records Strand’s opinion and struggles not to hurl her recorder into the backseat. To add insult to injury the pub is really nice. She’s been to a round dozen local gems with him but this moment where she gets to see him adapt to new surroundings is always excellent. Alex pushes off lunch, Strand orders the Chef’s salad. He eats with all the precision of a surgeon. Nothing wasted. To her surprise he unbuttons the top of his shirt. She has a spare moment to wonder when they hit unbuttoned shirt territory before her core pulses and she remembers. He made her come three times. A loose button shouldn’t be this distracting. 

She orders a root beer for her dry mouth. Strand rolls up his sleeves, rests his elbows on the table, the scoundrel, and orders the fanciest beer they have. 

His beer arrives before hers. She waits with near baited breath to see if he tastes it, if he rejects or accepts it. The intensity of her interest is almost off putting. “Are you sure you want to continue this?” 

“Hmm?” Her eyes are only for his thin lips on the glass. Her concentration is split between her sore, sticky thighs and the absurd notion of putting the beer glass between her legs and having him sip from there. 

He drinks it just like a normal person would. She doesn’t know why she expected something else. Or why it mattered. He puts the glass down. “The Magnusson investigation.”

She frowns sipping her own root beer. “Why wouldn’t we?”

Strand just looks at her. “Do you think Nikolai Magnusson was involved in his wife’s disappearance?”

When you have nothing nice to say, say nothing at all. “Do you?”

“Doesn’t matter,” he presses on, “you’re the one with the ethical obligations.”

“If you’re asking after my  _ ethics, _ ” she replies woodenly, “then I would have to say it has no bearing on the authenticity of his haunting.”

“Really?”

“Yes,” she lies. “That’s for the police to decide.”

He gives her a harder stare.  _ The police, who have a spare key to his house. The police, whom we both now aren’t exactly looking for a reason to put an ex-cop under fire. Why do the police get to decide if  _ he  _ killed  _ his  _ wife, but not mine?  _

She raises an eyebrow.  _ One of us agreed to share our life’s mission with the internet. Your maybe not dead at all wife is part of that bargain. _

“Alex,” he says in a low, deep voice. “That’s bullshit.”

Her breath catches but before she can deflect, push him around to her point of view he raises a hand and calls for the check. 

\--

California. King sized bed. There’s light shining in from the sunrise. 

Alex’s mouth is slick. Heather has just had the first orgasm she’s ever wanted. The only one she’s ever consented to. Alex reaches up to brush her mouth from her neck to her cunt. From breast to breast. It’s enough to make Heather sigh and relax her hips. Give Alex more friction where they’re pressed together pelvis to pelvis. This is a first for both of them and Alex is near breathless with excitement.  

Heather groans, contentment in every stretch of muscle. “You see it too?” Heather has her face buried in Alex’s hair but she still knows what she means. There’s a long stretch of mirror on the front of the wardrobe. They’re laying together completely visible in the length of sun kissed mirror. Alex is leaning over Heather, holding her together. All along Heather’s body the bruises are fading. There are still red marks from fucking - _ making love-  _ but what has been permanent for as long as Alex has known her is fading fast. Heather turns in her embrace, whispers, “It’s like getting new skin.” 

In response Alex leans over and dusts a kiss across the dark freckles on her nose. She presses a softer one against the uninjured shoulder. Heather crawls over her, breath fast and soft. When she slides her hand under Alex’s shirt against her ribs she says nothing. When that hand slips under her bra strap to pick at the skin there Alex curls herself around her friend like this will still end happily for either of them.

\--

It’s awhile out into the woods. Alex allowed herself to split up from Strand, who was armed with his own recorder, while she wandered off with Nikolai and a man who seems to have disappeared into the trees around them. They’re close to the last place Heather was ever seen. The place where her bloody footprints just stopped. 

“The problem is,” she observes aloud, “that you’ve never listened to the podcast.”

Nikolai stops in front of her. Just stops.

“If you had you’d know that Coralee Strand went missing twenty years ago,” she continues. “You’d know that I’d bring him with me. Did you just get the brief off the website and figure, hey, this stuff I made up about my wife sounds enough like demonic possession to sell on the internet?”

Nikolai stops. He shakes his legs out. One side and then another. Finally he turns to face her, all the charm she didn’t buy wiped away.

“Your friend is awhile away.” He tilts his head like a bird of prey. “I asked my buddies to take him the long way around. He makes me uncomfortable, you see. And you’re who I wanted to see.”

Alex pulls on mostly false bravado and squares her shoulders. “And?”

“What was she like when you had her?” His on her in a second, hands gripping her shoulders. “I managed to find all the guys she cheated on me with, The girls too, and wasn’t that a sexy little surprise, but you were the key. The one who got away. The one she wouldn’t give up. I wasn’t lying about Liv hearing her mother although I don’t see her in dark corners or reflections. I hear her just  _ fine  _ in memories.”

Alex steps back warily. 

“Sorry Alex.” He shrugs and it finally hits Alex what a fucking idiot she’s been. “But I always wanted to meet you.”

“Mr-”

“Nikolai.” He drags her closer, until his lips almost touch her hair. “She’s still here you know. Right here. I like to come out and visit her by her favourite tree. Christ I could’ve made a meal out of you. Too bad you marked yourself out for someone else, huh?” He grins and in the winter light his eyes are blank, horrid white. “See you sweetheart.”

Then he throws her backward into the dark.

\--

There was a walk in freezer at the one and only service job Alex ever worked. It was a local organic butchers at a market. The owner was a friend of her uncle and kept pots of rosemary around the shop to ward off the smell of dead blood. Real, fresh organic meat always smelled better than it should. Like healthy grass and hay than copper and iron. Alex quit two months in because Sui kept showing her pictures of baby animals. She insisted that this was a pivotal moment in their fledgling relationship: did she love her or the capitalist machine more? Alex was nineteen. She chose the vegan girlfriend who dumped her eight months later for their mutual ex. 

That walk in was her home away from home. She has a near supernatural ability to bear the cold. Whenever she had a customer who annoyed her or a spare moment she took her book and read until her fingers chilled. 

_ You never told me that. Although I guess I was too busy running from my family. You have to get up now.  _

Alex leans up against the wall. She’s in a tunnel. There’s a strange blue light and scratches on the wall. One exit that leads into a darkness she can’t see through. The ground is cold. Way, way, way too cold for the area. Her breath doesn’t so much as fog as freeze. This is really bad. Even worse is the girl, the woman in front of her. Not quite see through but not all the way here either. She’s short, less than Alex’s meager height with long red gold hair tied back. Peasant style blouse and a long skirt washed in blue light. Her eyes scan her face.  _ You’re not doing so hot. _

Alex scuttles away from the ghost of Heather Collins. 

She clicks her tongue and waves her hand at the only exit.  _ Don’t go down there. I think that’s where he put me so I can pretty much confirm there isn’t a way out. _

“I’m imagining you.” Alex wraps her hands around herself trying to keep her heart warm. “Extreme c-cold causes hallucinations.”

_ Both things can be true,  _ Heather folds down onto her knees in front of her. Her skirt, the one she died in brushes Alex’s ankle.  _ We need you Alex. He needs you. Liv needs you. Don’t die here, too. _

“Are you alright?” Alex asks. “Where you are? Is it better?”

_ No,  _ Heather replies,  _ I liked being alive.  _

Alex feels the cold start to burn. Her hands stop shaking, her face feels warm to the touch.

_ Shh,  _ Heathers ghost folds over her,  _ let me take care of you. It was warm in California remember? We held hands on the beach. I took your virginity in that hotel room. It was sunrise, remember? We could see the ocean. _

“I wasn’t a virgin.”

_ Is that what you want your last words to be?  _ Heathers voice curls around her ears,  _ I took your heart, even if I was careful not to break it. You loved me, the first one is always hard, even when everyone lives to the end of the story. I loved you, so let me save you. Open your eyes, stand up and say his name, the one you want to find you. I won’t leave you here alone.   _

It’s stupid as hell. Alex has maybe a few minutes of will left in her before she just lays down and goes to sleep. Wasting it on an apparitions recommendation is ridiculous. She sounds like Strand. How is she so good at imagining him? She gets to her feet, hugs what little bit of strength she has left to her chest, and calls, “Strand?” Louder, “Richard?”

“Alex!” The awful cold snaps out of the air plunging her back towards something more like Seattle in a particularly pissy mood. Alex breathes in the warmer air in huge gulps. It burns her lungs forcing her to hack and cough. Strand’s voice carries down from above. “We’re coming don’t worry.”  

The air hurts so badly she fears she’s imagining it. “Richard?”

Strong arms haul her up from behind forcing what little air doesn’t hurt right out of her. She can smell him, feel him along her back and she starts crying in earnest. “Breathe,” he whispers into her hair, hauling her into his arms and up towards what sounds like an army of people, “keep breathing. Don’t worry about talking. I called a friend at a nearby station and asked if he knew about Magnusson. He got back to me about an hour ago and told me that he was involved in some disappearances down south. The locals weren’t willing to do anything about him so his hands were tied. Without a body- Well. Without a body a murder charge is hard to stick. When I asked him for some back up, out of uniform, he jumped at the chance. He brought dogs, trackers, everything he could manage on short notice. You were never alone, Alex. Believe that. ” A phone buzzes. “That’s Nic. I’ll handle it.”

She clutches at his shoulders with weak hands. Pulls on his shirt. Strand makes a sound like an aborted sigh. Half his usual impatience, half terror. 

“You’re going into shock.” Strands hands rub her shoulders. “We need to warm you up slowly.”

“Stay,” she chokes out. “Please stay.”

Strand hesitates. “Yes, of course.”  

\--

It’s no real surprise to her that they end up sleeping together. They’d pretty much made it inevitable. It’s more of a surprise that it’s in a bathtub, water sloshing over the sides as he finally fucks into her. She’s crying, thighs wrapped around him as they mark each other up. He’s too big for the tub. She’s too big for the tub. They make it work. Strand worries at her breasts until they’re sore from tending, tells her how sweet she tastes with the steam. He mouths at her nipples, sucks water off her skin. For her part she stays little and tired under him, too wrung out to keep up her part of this fight. He’s slower, gentler, but still not really asking for her permission when he pushes in. The brief spark of pain takes her by surprise, as does the pressure he puts on her clit forcing her through the first of several brutal orgasms. She ran out of tears awhile ago. By the time they’ve negotiated their way to him under her, his hands steadying her descent she’s back to wanting. It’s not the absurd need of the first time, it’s uncertainty or it’s overwhelming intensity. This time they’re agreed completely. Alex needs to let him all the way in. Strand needs to give her what she needs.   

She’s bent over him rocking slowly, shallowly. She rises up just enough for her mouth to reach his chin. Since it would be unsexy to lick there she rests her forehead on him, turns her mouth so she can feel his stubble every time the water rises and falls. He groans under her and presses down on her ass with one hand, urging her on. He comes first swearing all the way. Alex catches the end of every word with her lips, bites at them as they leave his mouth. When she goes over herself he’s back to his hair obsession, holding her still, looking her right in the eyes.  

Alex leaves with a constellations of marks up her neck and Strand’s heavy reassurance that she’s here, she’s alive and he’s got her.  

Later when she shrugs on her coat he frowns at her from their shared bed.

“I just need you to come with me.” She adds, “Not to believe me. I just need to make sure he was lying.”

Strand frowns. He shrugs on his coat anyway. They’re wandering the woods, again. Alex is avoiding puking from the sheer terror of just how many journalistic codes she’s violating by just being too stubborn to give in. Strand is kind enough to not mention it. Or maybe he’s silently panicking over breaking a twenty year celibacy streak with a journalist whose express purpose is overturning the painful moments of his life for the internet. One who was nearly killed not even a full day ago.   

“Was it, uh,” oh god please kill her. “Was it the first-”

“No.” Strand turns just enough to brush her side. Alex’s heart shoots up. This is awful. “One: even if this was something Coralee was around to argue about I don’t think she would.” His face twists unhappily, painfully. Alex leans into his side. He sighs and steps away. “Two: I...decided it was unhealthy to mourn for longer than seven years.”

Alex’s jaw drops. Seven  _ years.  _

Strand smiles unhappily. Alex is about to say something hopefully non-horrible when she feels a familiar breath across her ear. A voice. A hand. A pair of soft lips on her own-

She turns. There she is: Heather’s body sitting under a tree, resting as if she’d just fallen asleep there. 

\--

Alex goes home to her parents, to her school. She expects the whole thing to go to pieces. For the police to call her down to the station. For her parents to yell at her for driving a girl to another country to escape her home life. But Heather Collins seems to disappear entirely from one day to the next. She was like a ghost waiting to happen. Just waiting for an opportunity to drift into obscurity. Her parents don’t report her missing. The school thinks she went to live with some relatives. She just...goes away.

It drives her a little nuts to be honest. How can you just forget someone like that? Someone with Heather’s eyes? Her spirit? The fucking bruises she walked around with every damn day? But that’s the point, isn’t it? Heather lived everyday with the evidence stamped all over her and no one, not even Alex, really knew what was going on. 

If she hadn’t stopped under that tree and asked about her book what would have happened?

Because Alex can answer these questions, she does. Statistics: family violence, homelessness, drug abuse, suicide, murder-suicide. Rape. Turns out things could have been worse, somehow. Somehow Heather could’ve been worse off staying. 

Somehow, Alex did the right thing. 

\--

They clear things up with the police. They’re unhappy with Nikolai but far more so with her for unearthing his deception. She can feel that they’d rather keep their buddy and leave Heather alone, unburied in the woods. The seething unholy rage that kindles in her carries her through talking to them. Strand stands sentinel beside her through it. Shoulder pressed to chest. He’s angry too. 

She shelves the episode after talking to Vilde Magnusson, Olivia’s aunt and guardian. Nikolai can rot in hell for all she cares, but Olivia needs the distance. Never mind that Olivia herself wants it out there as soon as possible. This small town will probably always think her mother was a victim of circumstance or a piece of flotsam better forgotten, but Olivia won’t live here much longer. Her hometown can rot. She wants the world to know her mother wasn’t what he said she was.

Alex doesn’t have the heart to tell her that it doesn’t work that way. You tell the story but everyone else writes the reviews. Women like Heather rarely get what they deserve even in death.  

It’s kinder to shelve it. 

She does get the kodak moment of Olivia Magnusson throwing all five feet of herself onto Strand. She hugs him with all her fourteen year old might. Despite the sodden ground he kneels down so she can tuck her head against his shoulder. He says something to her. When he stands back up he places an awkward, paternal hand on her head. She beams up at him. Alex laughs inwardly. Strand is probably reliving a moment with his long estranged daughter at the same age. Olivia is developing a complicated complex about father figures right before her eyes. 

For the dozenth time this trip Strand surprises her by unwrapping his scarf and draping it around Olivia’s thin shoulders and solemnly handing her a card. She watches him say the words  _ you can call, anytime  _ and feels her affection for him spread into dangerous territory. Olivia smiles at the ground, one hand curled around herself and says something charmingly young. She knows because Strand smiles all the way to his eyes. Poor girl, she’s doomed to a life of unfortunate crushes on blue eyed men. 

Olivia already has her information. Their goodbye is punctuated with a quick hug and a promise to skype when she gets to New York. Strand takes the wheel when they head towards home. Alex passes time flipping music stations until she lands on an NPR fluff piece. After a long stretch of silence Strand hands her a folded up piece of paper. 

It sits heavy as stone in her palm. The bleeding, faded edges of  _ Carolina - Alex drinking her stupid milkshake.  _ Heather thought she was being funny ordering a caramel milkshake. Alex doesn’t even take sugar in her coffee.  __

(It was mid afternoon, they were running out of gas but Heather knew how to hustle. Her face was still fucked to shit but she had a nice smile and was so jaded to her own body, it’s attractions, that Alex silently worried about how she was going to make cash. They stopped at Carolina because it had a two dollar menu. Ms Caroline, the owner of the Carolina, was two years rid of her piece of shit husband and let Heather pick up a shift under the table. It wasn’t enough to buy gas but it got them a free meal and a few tokens for the old style arcade set up back. A photo booth. Stargate. A jukebox. They kissed for the camera. Alex can still taste shitty fry oil and peppermint lip balm.)

She unfolds the photo. There she is: Alex with her stupid ugly blue sweater and stickers on her cheek. She’s laughing so hard caramel milkshake is coming out of her nose. The moment the camera snapped has her covering her mouth, shying away. The moment the camera misses is Alex’s foot trapped between Heather’s under the table. 

Not for the first or last time Alex wishes she had a picture of Heather. When she left her in California she asked to be forgotten and Alex, not knowing the difference between an ending and an extended pause, thought it was for the best.

Strand waits her out. Hands politely still on the steering wheel. “Who was she?”

She should tell him the truth. She should. But they’re still subject and observer. She doesn’t want to give him anything he can take away. “Someone I knew.”

Strand looks at her sideways. He’s seen, touched, tasted every part of her body now. They’ve evened out the scales. But just like she’ll be damned if he gets his without her getting even, she won’t let him in any further than she has to. Already she gets the feeling one or both of them are walking away from this with scars.  

His mouth pulls flat. “Your turn for the music.”   

\--

Amalia is Alex’s first. 

Amalia’s first love has all the drama and tragedy Alex has come to expect from her friend. Amalia is living her whole life at twice the speed of everyone else, in higher definition with a better cast. 

Alex is pedestrian in comparison. “Lived down the street from me. She had smaller hands than I did. We drove down to California together once.”

The late afternoon light can’t touch them properly. Blankets, pillows, an errant throw Amalia bought back from Russia over the break are spread haphazardly over them. One or both of them could just put on some clothes but lying skin to skin feels better. Washed out music is filtering through the floorboards and someone is making curry from scratch down the hall. Instead of thinking about what she’s doing here, in this room, with the most dangerously interesting woman Alex has met thus far in her life, Alex watches the ceiling and the patterned fall of dust motes. Once this way, then another. 

“You know,” Alex says picking at the skin under Amalia’s bra strap. The sun is shining through the rain in fits and starts. If she starts to drift away, to feel as if the room has too many soft edges, it’s just because Amalia has one hell of a wicked tongue. “The kind of things girls do for each other.”

\--

She has a long time to process what happened. Things ebb and flow. The Black Tapes get bigger. Coralee might be alive. There are cults and Simon Reese and Strand ripping her a new asshole over any number of things she’s done wrong. There’s also Olivia Magnusson moving to New York City ( _ The New York City!  _ Her weekly postcard says every time. At least  _ one  _ person is using stamps.com) and making friends with a group of equally shy, smart kids. She’s not over her mother’s death, not by a long shot, but she’s inching forward. She’s just been accepted to an art program and includes a pamphlet for her to show Strand. He still won’t give her his address. She misses both of them and hopes they’re doing well.   

Strand is fine as far as she knows. They’re currently pretending the other doesn’t exist. For her part Alex is sleepless in Seattle. 

Vilde Magnusson sends her a box once Heather’s will is read. Heather named Alex in her will which was a very cool thirty seconds for Paul, who figured he was getting a million dollars off Strand, and a long drawn out heart attack for Nic and Terry. Alex had the utter humiliation of coming most of the way clean.

“Wait,” Nic interrupts. Paul and Terry are clearly deciding if they need to fire her. “Heather Collins as in the one who always borrowed the books I wanted from the library?”

Alex laughs and hugs him. He doesn’t understand why. Alex doesn’t need to tell him.

Heather’s last gift is an empty box with the word  _ Carolina  _ carved on top. Inside is that first book they shared. The one Nic wanted to borrow. Stuck to the bottom of the box is a picture of two girls, arms slung over each other's shoulders, smiling. They are very clearly in love. 

She sends Strand a picture of the book at the bottom of the box right next to Liv’s brochure. Her smiling face next to Heather’s is just visible. She captions:  _ Not quite a real Black Tape. Add it to the #solved pile anyway.  _

**Author's Note:**

> There are two companion pieces for this: The Weekend Strand Thought He Was Having When Miss Reagan Called and the companion currently called RICHARD STRAND GETS A FUCKING DOG. The summary of which is: Strand takes a long complicated road trip featuring the uncomplicated friendships he has with other white male academics of a certain age, none of whom have moved to digital let alone something as unseemly as 'television for your ears'. The complicated relationships he has with his daughters, both surrogate and blood related. The weird intense sex he keeps having with Alex Reagan. And finally his Long Lost Wife who is none of those things and somehow still hiding cryptic messages in his hotel pot plants. There aren't any rare book stores in Fuck You, Pennsylvania Coralee just use Whisper like a normal fucking person.
> 
> Oh, and Desmond, the Great Dane.


End file.
